The present invention relates to a payment management method and system which suitably use a credit card based on an intelligent card (which will also be referred to as IC card, hereinafter).
Conventionally, a user of a credit card, after using it, has checked a customer copy or receipt of the card received from one of credit member stores of the credit card against a debit note delivered from a credit company, and has judged the transaction history to be charged next time or after the next time and a wrong demand. Further, the user copy of the credit is disclosed in Japanese Patent Application NO. 7-85086 (JP-A-8-287201) a method for storing a transaction history in a storage in an IC card.
In the above method, the card user cannot know an amount claimed to be drawn next time before he accepts the bill from the card company. If the user lost the user copy, then he cannot know when and how much he used it and also cannot know an illegal use (if any) and an amount to be demanded after the next time because he cannot know contents of the debit note.
As means for solving such problems, there is already known such a service that a user can collate his amount claimed per month through telephone or Internet.
In the aforementioned claimed-amount collation service, however, the user searches for his transaction history stored in the card company, so it takes the user lots of time to input his card number and after the searching, he must troublesomely check a copy or as a receipt received upon its use against the transaction history. Even when the user such service, it takes lots of time to register his transaction history after the card company receives the transaction history from a credit card member store, for which reason the user may sometimes fails to find his transaction history by searching for it based on the above service.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a payment management method and system which can solve the above problems in the prior art and wherein a transaction history is stored in an IC card so that a user of the IC credit card can collate the transaction history with demanded amount data possessed by a card company, can quickly confirm a demanded amount date, and can grasp payment due amounts claimed next time and after the next time to thereby realize suitable payment management.
In an aspect of the present invention, the above object is attained by a payment management method in a system which includes an IC card having a storage means for storing transaction history data therein, a terminal device for accessing the data within the IC card, and a server in a card company connected with the terminal device via a network and having a storage means for storage of credit user data demanded by a credit card member store. The payment management method includes steps of storing into the storage means within the IC card the transaction history data when the user paid in the credit member store with use of the IC card, reading out the transaction history data from the IC card with use of the terminal device, reading out the credit user data from the server storage means with use of the terminal device, collating the transaction history data read out from the IC card with the credit user data read out from the server, and displaying its collated result on the terminal device.
The step of displaying the collated result may include a step of displaying the collated result as divided into a charged amount claimed next time and an charged amount claimed after the next time.
The transaction history data within the IC card and the credit user data within the server may include demand date data indicative of a date on which the card user is to be demanded and payment state data indicative of whether or not the payment is finished, such that the demand date data and payment state data of the transaction history data within the IC card can be updated according to the credit user data of the server extracted by the terminal device.
Upon collation, when the transaction history data is present in the storage means of the IC card but the credit demand data corresponding to the transaction history data is not present in the storage device connected to the server, data indicative of xe2x80x98not demandedxe2x80x99 may be added to the transaction history data and its collated result may be displayed. Upon collation, further, when the credit demand data is present in the storage device connected to the server but the transaction history data corresponding to the credit demand data is not present in the storage means of the IC card, the transaction history data corresponding to the credit demand data may be newly added to the storage device of the IC card, data indicative of xe2x80x98unknown billing dataxe2x80x99 may be added to the added transaction history data, and its collation result may be displayed.
The payment management method of the present invention may further include a step of displaying at least the transaction history data of already paid or of unknown demand in the transaction history data of the storage means of the IC card by means of the terminal device, and deleting these transaction history data.
The payment management method of the present invention may further include a step of issuing an inquiry relating to the transaction history data of the unknown demand to the credit company by the user who give an instruction on a display screen showing the collated result.
In another aspect of the present invention, there is provided a payment management method in a system which includes an IC card having a storage means for storing transaction history data therein, a terminal device for accessing the data within the IC card, and a server of a credit company having storage means connected to the terminal device via a network for storing credit user data demanded by a credit member store. The payment management method includes steps of storing into the storage means of the IC card the transaction history data when a card user paid in the credit member store with use of the IC card, reading out the transaction history data from the IC card by means of the terminal device, transmitting the credit user data from the server of the credit company to the terminal device, receiving the transmitted credit user data at the terminal device, collating the transaction history data read out from the IC card with the received credit user data, and displaying its collated result on the terminal device.
The step of reading out the transaction history data from the IC card by means of the terminal device may include a step of storing the read transaction history data into the storage means of the terminal device; and the step of collating the transaction history data read out from the IC card at the terminal device with the credit user data extracted from the server may collate the transaction history data stored in the storage means of the terminal device with the credit user data extracted from the server.
In a further aspect of the present invention, there is provided a payment management system which uses an IC card having therein a storage means for storage of transaction history data to manage payment data relating to user""s payment conducted in a credit member store. The payment management system includes a means for reading out the transaction history data from the IC card, a means for acquiring the credit user data from the server of the credit company for management of the credit user data about payment based on the IC card, a means for collating the transaction history data read out from the IC card with the acquired credit user data to create a collated result, and means for displaying the created collated result.
The IC card in the present invention, which is used for credit purchase in the credit member store, has a communication device and a storage device for holding the transaction history data obtained through the communication device therein, the data containing the name of the member store used at the time of the credit purchase and a purchased amount therefor.
A processor also included in the IC card compares own credit data obtained through the communication device and network with the aforementioned transaction history data, and when a record different from the history data is present in the credit data, records the different record in the storage device as the transaction history data.
Also included in the transaction history data are data on a payment due date for the transaction or purchased amount and data indicative of a payment state for the purchased amount.
Further, a program for use in the terminal device in the present invention is provided as fixed to a recording medium which follows. That is, there is provided a recording medium for holding therein an executable program read into a terminal device which can be connected to another storage device via a network to read and write data from and to an IC card used as a credit card. The program includes steps of storing transaction history data when a user of the IC card used it in a credit member store for his payment into a storage means within the IC card, reading out the transaction history data from the IC card, extracting credit user data about the IC card being stored in the storage device via the network from the storage device, collating the transaction history data read out from the IC card with the credit user data, and displaying its collated result on the terminal device.
If some piece of data is present not in the transaction history data but present in the credit user data in the collating step, an addition of the third data to the transaction history data is displayed in the displaying step.